E-mail lets slip waiting list fiddle

Hospital managers are today at the centre of a new row over distorted waiting-list figures.

Private emails leaked to the Evening Standard suggest managers at a leading London hospital encouraged junior staff to cover up a backlog of operations.

A senior executive at the hospital treating the Countess of Wessex's new baby told colleagues he had "instructed" junior staff "not to

report the total position".

Details of the messages sparked a backlash from patient groups and politicians today - with calls for the individuals responsible to be held to account.

The emails involve the waiting list for outpatient treatment at St George's Hospital, Tooting. They were exchanged after staff discovered that 1,450 more people were waiting for treatment than previously realised - putting the hospital 100 per cent behind its target.

The emails reveal managers hoped to "drip-feed" the real figure onto the waiting-list total over a period of months to avoid embarrassment. But the plan was thwarted when a conscientious clerk - named only as Traci - told civil servants the true position.

The move sparked the wrath of her boss, St George's deputy chief executive John Parkes, who fired off an email to senior colleagues complaining: "I gave Traci an instruction by email that for last month we would not report the total position."

He then lamented the clerk's lack of "political insight", adding: "I met with Traci yesterday and explained very nicely to her that it is her job to report the numbers, and it is my job to manage the politics, and that she must make me aware of any problems, rather than just reporting numbers up the line." In his email, Mr Parkes describes the discovery of the extra 1,450 patients as a "huge cock-up".

When asked today about the emails, the hospital claimed senior managers wanted to let the new figures out in stages to avoid creating the impression of a massive increase in one particular month. A spokesman later claimed that adding all the newly discovered patients to the official figure at once could put managers under intense pressure to treat them immediately - a move that could have an adverse effect on other patients.

The messages were sent to the hospital's then finance director, Ian Perkin, who is embroiled in an industrial tribunal with St George's after being fired. He told the Standard today: "People know that this sort of thing goes on in hospitals but getting the evidence is very rare. Mr Parkes has provided it in black and white."

MP Paul Burstow , health spokesman for the Liberal Democrats, said: "If managers put into black and white these sorts of statements, which effectively ask others to lie, there must be more than a serious question mark over their future careers."

Simon Williams, of the Patients' Association, said: "This shows why, when NHS managers talk about waiting-list figures, we do not believe them."

Mr Parkes left St George's last year to become chief executive of West Suffolk Hospitals NHS Trust. He said today: "My email makes clear that 'if I did not want [the relevant member of staff] to report the correct numbers I would confirm this in writing'. Since I issued no such instruction it follows that I wanted her to report the correct figures.

"In subsequent emails I made it crystal clear that neither the Trust nor I would support any return that misrepresented reality."